Mobile-home park’s sale to spark ire

What: The Poway City Council is expected to vote to sell Poway Royal Estates

When: 7 p.m. Tuesday

Where: Council chambers, 13325 Civic Center Drive

The last and largest mobile-home park owned by the city of Poway will be sold to a for-profit company for $38.3 million if approved by the City Council on Tuesday.

The sale, as being recommended by the city staff, will not please many of the more than 1,000 residents who had hoped it would be made to a different company that was promising, but not guaranteeing, that residents would be allowed at some point to buy the land beneath their homes. However, that company offered a bid more than $10 million less than that of Hometown America, a Chicago-based company that owns 129 mobile-home parks across the country.

The proposed sale requires the buyer to renovate the park and locks the company into only modest rent increases beginning two years from now. For the next two years, rents will remain as they are for all residents, or even longer if roughly $1 million in renovations have not been completed by then.

The city bought the 51-acre park in 1991 at the request of the residents to stabilize rents and improve maintenance of the facilities. The property consists of 397 rental spaces and two park-owned manager spaces at the northwest corner of Metate Lane and Community Road.

Dena Fuentes, director of redevelopment services for the city, said the goals of the sale were numerous and included that the sale should not hurt the low- and moderate-income residents of the park, that it must be sold at the current market value through an open and competitive process, that the city no longer be responsible for the financial or management of the park, and that the park should continue to be well-maintained and remain always as a mobile-home park.

Late last year, the city provided park residents with 60 days’ notice regarding the sale in case they could come up with the money to buy it on their own. No bid was received, and the park was listed for sale Feb. 1. Originally, 11 bids were received, then narrowed to four, including one from Rancho Carlsbad Partners, the company the residents were supporting.

However, Fuentes said, the $28 million bid by Rancho Carlsbad, if it were to be accepted, essentially would have meant that the city would subsidize the sale to the tune of $10 million, which could legally be viewed as an illegal gift of public funds.

Hometown America bid $38 million. Details of the sale that was agreed to Wednesday, pending council approval, are complicated. The bottom line is that the city should see a profit of about $2 million should the sale be completed by July, City Manager Penny Riley said.

Joe Banks, a member of the Poway Royal Estates Home-owners Association board of directors, said the pending sale is not what residents want.

“We’re not happy with it at all,” he said. “We feel the city is not keeping the best interest of the residents at heart. The best interest would be to let us own the land underneath us.”

A large crowd is expected at Tuesday’s council meeting, when the matter will be up for a vote.